


Hunch

by ultharkitty



Category: Dredd (2012)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-22
Updated: 2012-12-22
Packaged: 2017-11-22 01:45:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 892
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/604456
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ultharkitty/pseuds/ultharkitty
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dredd arrives at a crime scene only to find something he didn't expect. Acting on a hunch, he calls in Anderson. </p><p>Contains non-graphic description of a murder scene, and details from the comics imported into movieverse. </p><p>Many thanks to eaten-by-bears for betaing this fic :D</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hunch

**Author's Note:**

  * For [wickedtrue](https://archiveofourown.org/users/wickedtrue/gifts).



A low-rent hab in Parker Block; forty-fourth floor, two corridors from the light well. Here, the Sun is a memory, full power a myth. Moisture clings to the dirty concrete, grim-lit with the flickering yellow of the one remaining emergency bulb. 

Dredd makes a visual sweep of the hallway. Relevant details register: swipe of blood over graffiti, gang signs. Small time perps, no-one he's ever heard of. Signs of life: just the mold crawling up the walls, a rat scrabbling through a heap of rotting trash. 

He approaches the door, his Lawgiver heavy in his gloved hand. 

He tries the buzzer, standing to the side in case someone decides to take a crack at him. No response. 

He doesn't think about backup. 

Five long seconds he pauses to listen. The call came in an hour ago; an oldster in the next hab down heard screaming, pleading, gunfire. It's taken that long for Dredd to get here. 

He hears nothing. 

He shoots the lock, Hi-Ex, and gives the smoke a second or two to clear. Then he's in. 

The first thing to hit him is the stench. Blood and bile are the best of it. There are four dead in the family room, two slouched on the sofa, two splayed on the floor. 

He doesn't stop to examine them. 

There's another in the nook that serves as a kitchen, one more in the rest room. He moves onto the bedrooms, sure now the perps are long gone. The victims look like a family; could be revenge, a vendetta, a loan shark out to make an example of them. Could be anything. Forensics can sort it out.

There are two bedrooms, two beds apiece although there's hardly space for them. There's blood on the ceiling, but Dredd thinks it belongs to the woman he found in the kitchenette. 

In the second bedroom, someone sniffles. 

Dredd holds still, Lawgiver poised, but not quite ready to shoot. It sounds like a juve. 

He has time to react as a child launches itself at him from a space between the beds. But he doesn't, he goes on a hunch. The child barrels into him and clings to his leg, shivering. 

Good call.

"They're all dead," the kid says. A girl then, and she sounds older than she looks. 

Dredd grabs the back of her jacket and hauls her off him. "Remain here," he tells her. She's likely a witness, and traumatised juves aren't his area of expertise. 

She sniffles again, but does as she's told. Back in the family room, Dredd holsters his Lawgiver and takes a longer look around. 

"Dredd to control, I need forensics and a meat-wagon at Parker, apartment forty-four twenty-five." He pauses. "And call Anderson, I want her here."

Control confirms; there will be a delay for the meat-wagon, but Anderson is already _en-route_. 

In the bedroom, the girl pushes open the door. She sits on the foot of a bed, swinging her heels. She catches Dredd looking, and doesn't look down. "Did you get the bad man?" she asks, eyes watery and wide.

He tells her to stay where she is, that another Judge is on her way. 

* * *

Dredd watches Anderson work. He wants to be wrong about the girl, but he's been here before. He remembers a boy with a half-cocked smile and wide watery eyes, and an alibi for every dead relative. 

Dredd had suspected him, like he suspected everyone, but only for a moment.

His mistake. 

The girl begins to fidget. Anderson crouches in front of her, expression neutral, hair mussed from her helmet. 

Dredd can only imagine what's going on in their shared mindspace. She explained it to him once, on a stakeout a few months after Peach Trees. The girl will be conscious of her probing. The child's innocent expression turns fierce. 

Anderson seizes her before Dredd has started to move, and long before the juve can reach the door. 

"Iso-cube," Anderson says; it's her arrest, her call. "Twenty years." She pauses, gives the girl a grim stare that people say she learnt from him. "Per victim. I'm sending you for psych evaluation, potential for parole to be decided after the tests." 

The girl's eyes really do tear up. 

Anderson isn't moved. "If you were six years older," she says, "the sentence would be death. You would be executed, here and now."

Forensics arrives in a clatter of equipment. Anderson hands over the girl, and they walk out together, her and Dredd. 

"We'll get him," she says, and he knows she sees the innocent-eyed boy from his past.

Dredd grunts. He got him before, twice. It's not catching him that's the problem, it's keeping him. 

They emerge from the elevator, their Lawmasters waiting side by side in the lobby. 

"He won't always be the one that got away," Anderson says.

"Optimistic." Dredd doesn't feel like elaborating, but Anderson doesn't need him to. 

She fetches her helmet, holds it without putting it on. "That girl could have turned out just like Maybe," she said. "But you saw the signs. You were right, and now she won't."

It's cold comfort. Dredd mounts his bike and guns the engine. Anderson finally puts on her helmet. 

New calls come in from Control, and they make their selections. Without another word, they part ways and take their separate paths through the city.


End file.
